David Foster Wallace, RIP, and Michael Joyce

The literary tennis world is reeling today, on the news that David Foster Wallace hung himself at his home in California. (The literary world alone is doing a bit more than just reeling.) For the record, DFW wrote the best thing ever written about tennis since John McPhee's "Levels of the Game." I'd like someone to get in touch with Michael Joyce, the former tour pro and current quasi-coach of Maria Sharapova, who was the star of DFW's essay "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry," which was anthologized in A So-Called Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."

In fact, I wonder what the tennis world generally will have to say about this.

Tennis benefited greatly from having perhaps the most famous and skillful writer of his generation often turning his attention to the sport. I can't find "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry" anywhere online, but here's DFW's take on Roger Federer, for the NYT's Play magazine.

Enjoy, be sad.

(The Wii Tennis avatar of DFW is the only thing I could find that showed the guy in a true tennis context. I think it's pretty depressing that, for all he did for the sport in terms of establishing it as a legit framework for literary exploration, nobody ever seems to have thought of getting a picture of some video footage of him in action.)